Sencha, a leader in powering HTML5 development for desktop and mobile applications, today announced the availability of the new Sencha Touch Extensions for Windows Azure. With this strategic initiative between Sencha and Microsoft Corp., developers can now build mobile applications within the Sencha Touch mobile framework that easily integrate with Windows Azure Mobile Services, including mobile data, authentication and push notification services.
Sencha Touch Bundle enables developers to build powerful HTML5 business applications that work on every leading mobile platform. Tens of thousands of mobile apps have been built with Sencha Touch Bundle, many of which require reliable and secure backend services supplied by Windows Azure—a cloud platform for building, deploying and managing applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers.
The newly released Sencha Touch Extensions for Windows Azure reflects the mission of delivering easy-to-use tools and frameworks for developers so they can focus on quickly delivering high quality applications across the enterprise. The API design allows developers to integrate Windows Azure services into their new or existing applications by wrapping those services inside Sencha Touch Bundle.
“Windows Azure Mobile Services provides capabilities that are integral to HTML5 developers and that let them add a scalable cloud backend to apps in minutes,” said Vibhor Kapoor, director, Product Marketing at Microsoft. “Sencha Touch Extensions for Windows Azure connects app developers to tools that help them rapidly deliver the mobile apps that are powering today’s mobile workforce.”
“By delivering Sencha Touch Extensions for Windows Azure to our developer community, we are expanding the ecosystem for developing powerful HTML5 applications,” said Michael Mullany, CEO at Sencha. “Through seamless API design, users can quickly tap into backend services supplied through Windows Azure Mobile Services, which will lead to stronger applications with expanded capabilities.”
Sencha Touch Extensions for Windows Azure has been designed to connect Sencha Touch Bundle applications with the most important Windows Azure services to deliver powerful applications with feature sets including:
• Mobile data—allows developers to connect with the Azure Mobile Services API to perform create, read, update and delete (CRUD) operations on data service tables.
• Authentication—eliminates the need to write, configure and test custom authentication systems. By copying over the App ID and Secret for Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, or Google account, developers can authenticate their users with only a few lines of code. Implementing an app-specific authentication system is of course supported, as is connecting to Windows Azure Active Directory for employee-facing mobile apps.
• Push notifications—sending push notifications is as simple as uploading developer credentials for a given platform. Developers can also connect to Notification Hubs to broadcast push notifications to millions of devices across a variety of popular platforms.
• Storage (blob and table)—offers a straightforward way for developers to store data in the cloud using blob and table storage creating data options that make it easy for developers to add a global leaderboard to cross-platform games, maintain a friends list, store user-generated images and videos, and even transactional information.
Sencha Touch Extensions for Windows Azure is a free add-on download available to everyone that will contain the source code, full documentation, user guides and sample applications, and is generally available starting today.
